TREE AS MONUMENT is a temporary (inflatable) MUSEUM all about the TREE.

Above: 40m high Cyprus Tree on the LORNE foreshore, part of the sculpture trail LSB 2018.

Bio security at the door, magnifying glasses on request aiding you to get up close and personal with this OLD beautiful pine. Maybe for some the first time they really stopped and looked at a tree as for many it blends in with the rest of the woods. So I ask, do we take trees for granted?

LANDscanning: is the secondary sequence and residue capture while WALK-ing between trees asking the YARRA line, mapping, this is a personal and public performance, visible and invisible.

Walking leaves little traces, little is left behind after the experience except tracks of thoughts so the idea of simple photographs or drawings during such a walk is clearly not enough: an object cannot compete with an experience. This is why this subjective experience uses the process of the LANDscanning.

LANDscanning collects the experience of the walk, the tactile meeting of the tree as a sensuous engagement, collecting the mirco residue of the past of all types of engagement: the fallen leaves, the dying flowers, the scared bark of graffiti and even when you think you have left nothing!! LANDscanning captures this engagement to become a visually true semiotic reading of place.

LANDscans are captured using a hand held scanner, an instrument that has become an extension of myself, as a natural and familiar process. Just like extending your hand to touch and engage with the rich textures of a new environment, in this case, I can scan. So when my hand moves over these vastly different surfaces, my scanner effortlessly records this engagement, even my staggered movements or my digital dirt as I call it are permanently stored as textural memories of the engagement of place. The images captured are created by factors both intentional and unintentional which are strongly influenced by the moment of capture, discreet segments of place, points in time, samples of the surrounding environment which later revealed layered records of the impact of occupation, motion and time.

Every interaction leaves its mark including my own LANDscans captures the stuff we overlook.

Above: the BILLYcan with weighted pen suspended over paper and with examples of drawings of individual walks, Ashfield residency 2016/17

I carry a ‘BILLYcan’ a very simple and accessible device that collects the data of my movements. How? Well, inside the BILLYcan is a weighted pen over paper which records the simplest of movements, even moments of stillness – this simple process captures poetic drawings that are kinetically achieved by the agency of walking.

Art made by WALK-ing is a visualization and awareness of space, landscape and situation.

Walking with intent M.A.D.E. Walking opens a platform for contemporary practices that blend experimental geography, site-specific art, spatial agency and rural/urban activism. As a common journey they act as a trigger for exchange, research and performance, whereby walkers/participants navigate between the local and the global, between past, present and future, between urban and rural, between self and community. Walking a myriad of pathways sparks awareness of the infrastructures and blueprints that shape our societies.

Moreover, by putting a mundane activity as walking at the centre of our experiences, artists, audiences and other practitioners dissolve into each other. The common walking experience produces different forms of collective action and spatial engagement, blurring boundaries of engagement of a community.

If we look at this scientifically, walking increases the size of the brain regions linked to planning and memory and enhances creativity. From walking Walkers come away from the experience with an altered perception of place, having created a subjective map as they see things anew. Which is very much one of the driving concepts behind the participatory walks. However we must not forget the imagery created by the walks along well-beaten routes and paths. Patterns emerging of repeated movements never revealed before and it slows people down to notice their environment, they reflect on the algorithm translating route and rut into art. These walks dramatically change our relationship with the landscape, leading to better care and maintenance of that landscape. M.A.D.E. Walking puts the respective city on the map creating a unique soulful experience of where you are in the world.

Walking with intent M.A.D.E. Walking changes the face of hardcore exercise and makes it a creative pursuit– with fitness on the side.

Above: Close up of M.A.D.E. Walking of the feature image, made during a 5klm walk along LORNE’s foreshore. Generative Art M.A.D.E Walking while engagement and activation of place.

A memento of your engagement and actual experience of place during a leisurely walk

Walking is a format for contemporary art and spatial practices as it MAKES the INVISIBLE VISIBLE therefore changing our perspective of what we do and see.

The artistic exploration of (human) space, by means of walking as a sensorial and kinesthesic experience is not new as there are many famous historical walkers such as Albert Durer [1471 – 1528], Joseph Beuys [1921-1986], Luis Baragan [1902 1988], Albert Turner [] Richard Long []. Who’s participation in this kinesthesic aesthetic within our urban fabric poses little invention. Walking as observation, a stimulus related to space in a cognitive dimension of the urban space articulates itself in a personalized urban layer a kind of choreographic drawing.

(Many Experiences, Directly, Experienced)

Soon to be launched as a walking app for your phone

Walking as ART: ART as walkinG

Even walking with intent

While walking I carry a very simple device, a ‘BILLYcan’ a can that captures and collects data as beautiful drawing. How? Well, inside the BILLYcan is a weighted pen over paper which records the simplest of movements, even moments of stillness – this simple process captures poetic drawings that are kinetically achieved by the agency of self walking.

SUNCENTRAL the NEW HEART of Maroochydore

Above: is the resulting symbolic drawing created from literally engaging within place and landscape. See process images below.

WALK-ing is a personal yet a very public performance, visible and invisible.

The Poetry of Capture: LANDrawings

LANDrawing is another terminology I have devised to acutely describe the process of large format, endurance and days of walking kilometers to produce a singular work from walking with intent: art of Walking.

The LANDrawing process is still about walking in and through space making consciousness movements, gestures and directional decisions knowing each will be tracked to form preconceived patterns in the landscape, walking with intent. Even though not visible, in the doing as I leave no mark on the landscape, just pass over it. This information is collected on a basic fitness app, gives me all the data of distance, minutes, steps etc. For example the drawing while in Sydney during a residency in Pratten Park I walked 3.69km, 46.34 minutes, 5.3K steps all while I burnt 262 calories. Is this finally away for me to find fitness FUN!!

The site of the walk

The walking app was engaged and put in my pocket this is the resulting walk documented.

This is the walk overlaid on the map of the site and the first header image is the drawing I created from the walk to represent the place. An engagement of place a literal experience created by being there.

‘Interaction’ as a Sculptural strategy is the thesis of my practice and currently the specific research I am undertaking is walking in the landscape mapping my own personal patterns of engagement that are created as we navigate through our daily lives, landscapes and spaces.

So by me walking this becomes the agency of drawing to develop a series of projects that explore, interpret and make art from my movements when viewing art. These daily site specific project will track, trace and draw me walking, my movements even moments of stillness within the landscape of where and how I live. This process literally DRAWS the activity of viewing art, life, nature the landscape. No matter what I do it will include and works within the confines and parameters of my life, studio space, visualizing my layered movements within a confined areas or large public spaces all the while making what my intentions visible.

I want to put the mundane activity of walking at the centre of my process because it ties the experiences of artist and audience together within the same landscape. The common act of walking and its experiences as a collective action in the production of varying forms of spatial engagement. No matter what I am doing while walking I will be able to see where, why even repeated movements and how they are made.

I was taken on a walk in the new SUNcentral site and this is what I found…….

Grasses and sedges on dunes

But the images I love the most were of a wall graffitied that now no longer exists as it was removed/painted over. In total I captured 30 m of imagery including my own digital dirt from having to move quickly over the wall surface for fear of losing the scan and having to start all over again.

The next images are of this work in totality captured after taking roughly 10 scans I managed to procure 5 awesome works.

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Nicole Voevodin-Cash

I am an Australian Artist, Designer and Landscaper. This blog maps the various residential research projects I have undertaken over the past 15 years in Australia and Overseas. Exploring the concept of art as landscape and landscape as art and now while undertaking a residency in Sydney I have found the time to reflect and share these unique landscapes, my work and experiences that have inspired me.
Let me know what you think.